


Red Leaves Have Fallen

by The_Hobbit_Ninja



Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Mirkwood, Young Legolas Greenleaf
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-08-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:34:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 14,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24957703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Hobbit_Ninja/pseuds/The_Hobbit_Ninja
Summary: This is an account of Legolas's memories as he grows up.
Comments: 11
Kudos: 14





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Ok. So. I love these stories more than I can possibly say, and the characters legitimately feel like friends. Tolkien created something that has a life of its own, and I personally love to explore the characters and the vibrant world that begs to be explored. What better way than through fanfic?  
> Legolas always intrigued me, both in the book and the movie. He seems like a character with a fascinating back story that was never told satisfactorily. So here is my take on it. I have lots of different ideas for his backstory, but I decided to write it out this way (though this is only one of many versions). Personally, with my poor little inferior mortal brain, I can't wrap my head around Legolas being 2000 plus years old (as he is in the book), so I wrote it to fit his physical appearance of age, so around 25-28 ish. I also invented a few characters to accommodate my plot, people I kinda picture in his past, though they were not in the book or movie. 
> 
> Story title is a slight modification of a Legolas quote from the book. "Five hundred times have the red leaves fallen..."
> 
> I hope you enjoy! If you like it, PLEASE leave a comment! Hearing from you guys legitimately makes my days sooooooo much brighter:)  
> <3

“Ada?” 

“Leave me.”

“My braids unravel and I forget how to tie them. Won’t you show me again? Fingolyn pulls them and-” the elfling’s voice was high and clear as birdsong and yet unmistakably that of a child.

“Leave me, Legolas!”

“But Ada, why do I hurt you?” 

King Thranduil’s back was turned to his son, his breathing coming in short bursts.

“Please Ada, I-”

Thranduil turned and struck his small son across the face with the back of his hand, with a look of unfathomable pain and anger in his eyes. Legolas, not over four feet high, was knocked backward, his head striking the thick wooden door. Thranduil seemed to come out of a trance, horror painting a grim picture on his strained countenance. 

“Legolas, Lasse Tellele! Forgive me-”

The elfling scrambled to his feet, dazed, the look of a hunted animal in his inquisitive crystal-blue eyes. He slipped out the door with as much haste as could be expected from him if a pack of wargs had been snapping at his heels. Thranduil caught the flash of childlike terror and betrayal in his son’s eyes. 

The Woodland King sunk into the great oaken seat, resting his head in his hands, utter weariness dragging on his limbs like a rain soaked cape. Hot tears slipped between his fingers as he shook with sobs that had been restrained for six years. His beloved wife, valued above all things that move on the earth, had been called to the Valar at the birth of his son, six years since to the day. Thranduil had never had the heart to give Legolas the date of his birth, for if he had the day would be turned to celebration in coming years. The King cursed himself for his selfishness, and yet he could not bring himself to seek his child, the child that had taken Eluriel from him. In a corner of his mind he knew how grossly unjust it was to place the burden of his wife’s death on Legolas’s shoulders, and yet the bitterness lingered with all he did to extinguish it. 

*****

Legolas ran blindly, looking neither right nor left till he fell to his knees in a clearing of palest green grass nestled among the oak trees of Mirkwood. He sat cross legged, trying to steady his gasping breaths. The side of his face stung as if burnt, and his left eye could see naught but smudges of reality. He wondered why his father seemed to hate him so in the fall. In the rest of the year they got on all right, but when the leaves turned to gold and red and littered the forest floor his father seemed to loathe the sight of him. The child’s heart longed to run into open arms and receive the love he dreamed of, but the sting of raw skin on his cheek and aching in his temple pulled the pleasant daydreams from his mind. 

His small hands shook as he gathered a swatch of hair and split it carefully into three strands. With herculean concentration he plaited them together, tracing a golden mesh around his ear and laying it over his shoulder. His father had instructed him many times to keep the braids neat and straight, and the child did his best, but the elfling’s coordination was wanting. With triumph he laid one completed twist carefully down his back, but felt a sharp tug yanking at his scalp. 

Legolas whipped around, and before him stood a young elf boy maybe five years older than he. The plait unravelled. 

“Still can’t tie your own hair, Telelle Aran? Shall I aid thee in thy terribly difficult task?”

Fingolyn grabbed a handful of the child’s sun-colored hair, yanking it cruelly. 

“Meaiheithian! Meaiheithian!”

Legolas jerked away from twisting grip, 

“Yes, run Telelle Aran, or I may have to pack you in a barrel with the apples and send you down river to be eaten by the dragon!”

Legolas needed no encouragement to flee. He ran until he drew up to one of the many side doors of the Great Hall. 

His father’s deep commanding voice called him. 

“Legolas, come here.”

The little elf flinched at the voice, but turned to see his father striding up to him. 

“I have looked long for you, Lasse Telelle. I have something very important to tell you. Come here.” 

Legolas didn’t move, fearful questioning in his eyes. 

“My child, I won’t hurt you. Please, let me speak, for that is the first thing I must tell you. I am so very sorry, Legolas. Won’t you forgive me for my rashness?”

The child wavered on the spot for a moment, but eventually ran to Thranduil. The king knelt to Legolas’s six-year-old height and embraced his son, kissing the crown of the child’s golden head. After a long moment the king released him, meeting his sky-blue gaze. 

“Legolas, have you heard the other children talking of their ‘birthday’?”

“Yes Ada. Does everyone have a birthday?”

“Yes, everyone has a birthday. It is a day that marks the passage of time; every year it marks the day someone was born. Yesterday you were yet but six years old, but today, Lasse Telelle, is your birthday. Today it is seven years since you entered the world.”

“Was it my birthday last year too?”

“Yes, child. Your birthday occurs every year on the twenty-second day of the month of September.”

“Why have you not spoken of this before, Ada? For last year I must have turned six, and you said nothing. Why?” 

“You are right to question, for I have mislead you. I did not tell you because I did not wish to speak of the cursed day of September the twenty-second. You have never met your mother, Legolas, because in bringing you into the world she was forced to leave it. Your mother, my precious Eluriel, died giving birth to you. And so for me the twenty-second day of September is a day of mourning.” A look of fathomless horror invaded the child’s fair face.

“Oh Ada! I am so very sorry! How you must hate me for taking her away from you! I am a poor replacement for what you love most.” The elfling’s eyes welled with tears, making his eyes appear as blue summer lakes shimmering in the sun. “I do not now wonder why you cast me off in fall.”

“My child, you are not a poor substitute. I see in you Eluriel’s robin’s egg eyes, her sun-colored hair, her bird-like frame. Illuvatar called her home, you did not take her from me. I have been a cold and unfeeling fool to blame you, Lasse Telelle. Forgive me!”

“I forgive you, Adar. Will you still dislike me when the leaves turn gold every year?”

“No child. You are all I have left of her. YOU are what I love most in the world.”

The tears finally slipped over the little elf’s long lashes, and the king gathered his son into his arms. 

“But now I have something for you. Call it a birthday present.” Legolas extricated himself from his father’s embrace, eyes regaining their natural inquisitive look with a tint of mischievous glow.

**********

Legolas held the bow in his hands as if it was made of glass. Such a look of wonder never crossed a living face. The bow was almost three feet long, bare of design, the willow wood still rough. 

“This is a gift that will grow with you. You must sand down the wood, polish and finish it, and keep it clean and smooth. When you are a bit older you may carve anything you wish into the wood, as all the great warriors do.” Thranduil knelt to look into his son’s face.

“A good bow is to elves what a chest of gold is to men. If you wish, it can serve you better than any other thing in Middle Earth. It is yours to do with what you will. Children who begin to use these instruments early can become very skilled indeed. But when I look into your eyes, I see raw determination and resilience, gentleness and courage. If you let this simple piece of wood and strand of hair become a part of you...Lasse Telelle, you could become a legend.”

The small elf’s piercing blue eyes took on a steely quality, determination stirring in their depths. 

“Thank you, Adar. I will treasure this gift. I will try to be what you say I am.”


	2. Chapter 2

The soft square of leather glided across the shining wood. Legolas stood and held the bow out at arms length, one end planted in the red leaves littering the forest floor, the other held gingerly in slim white fingers. The willow wood glistened in the afternoon sun, every splinter smoothed away, gleaming like glass in firelight. 

He ran his fingers gently over its length, tracing the twisting engravings running along the curved surface. They were angular, irregular, asymmetrical at points, some might even say crude, but they were his. That was all that mattered. Four years had he labored over the simple curve of wood, smoothing it first with river washed stones, then polishing it for days with a small square of deerskin and a wood finishing liquid, the recipe for which was a guarded secret among the elves of Mirkwood. Finally, when he could see his twisting reflection bent around the shining wood, he began to carve designs into the bow. He bore several scars on his hands from a slip of fingers unused to the knife on slick wood, and the engravings were easily identified as the work of a child. And yet, through four years his skill had increased swiftly, and now as he settled on the ground, back against a tree, knife in hand and bow laid across his lap, the swirling likeness of an oak leaf that blossomed beneath his blade was beautifully formed. 

The work was soothing. He let the feeling of wood yielding to his meticulous yet almost subconscious touch spirit the pain away into the whispering breeze. 

Tears formed in his eyes. That was the only way Legolas ever cried, sudden and unexpected, not intended, the result of pain roughly told to shut it’s mouth until it screamed. He blinked hard, but tears traced salty tracks down his face anyway. 

His father lied. He lied. He lied. 

No other words presented themselves to his thought. Legolas hated his father because he loved him so much. Four years ago, when Legolas had turned seven, Thranduil had promised that he didn’t blame his son for taking Eluriel away. He said he wouldn’t cast Legolas away when the red leaves fell. 

“He lied. He lied!”

The words clawed their way between gritted teeth with no one to hear their cry. 

Four years had the promise been broken; always, when the trees were left bare and lonely with their leaves about their feet, Thranduil could not bear the sight of his son. The king liked to believe that he tried not to blame his son, but he deceived himself. It was almost a twisted pleasure to have something to hate because Eluriel was not there to love.

Legolas began to creep through the halls and avoid his father’s glance when fall came. He hated to sneak like that, but soon he got used to the feeling. His father’s harsh words and occasional blows--inflicted when Legolas got up the courage to demand an explanation, tried to remind Thranduil of his promise--did not fade in the little elf’s memory. Winter did not heal the hurt. Every year, when the first frosts coated the fallen leaves, freezing every fiber and accentuating ever sapless vein, Thranduil seemed to come out of some evil trance, appearing to feel remorse for his cruel disinterest and hostility of the fall. The first year Legolas accepted this; he was more than willing to accept the love he had longed for all autumn. But when the next year and the next showed the same freezing and thawing hatred, he preferred to stay out of his father’s sight, always. Why get used to conditional love when it would be withdrawn so soon?

Legolas knew it was wrong for his father to blame him for his mother’s death, and yet he blamed himself, both for the death and Thranduil’s senseless cyclical hatred. Whenever he found that the tears just wouldn’t obey his blinking eyes, he tried to remind himself of his guilt to drown out the other emotions. 

“You did it all. It’s all your fault. You can’t feel sorry for yourself, it’s all because of you, if you hadn’t been born the world would be better. You deserve what you get. Stop crying, you’re being ridiculous.”

He whispered this, and similar biting phrases of his own concoction over and over under his breath. Even in his own ears they sounded harsh, but they did their job. The tears stopped. They numbed, which was what he wanted. He needed to hear the cruelly convicting words for the same reason that someone needs to scratch an insect bite until it bleeds. One pain drives out another, and at least if it’s self-inflicted, it is controllable. 

After that he just sat in silence, watching the oak leaf blossom and wrap around the shining curve of wood, refusing to let thoughts mar the numb half-oblivion. 

**********

Fingolyn wandered through the trees, casting aside caution, taking no head of the snapping sticks and crinkling gold leaves beneath his feet. Anger raged and dashed in his breast, sparking and leaping in his eyes. It was not an anger of revenge or hatred, but instead an anger of bitter grief. His father had staggered home after dusk three days since, his shoulder and thigh torn cruelly, marks of razor-sharp teeth cut into ragged flesh. His father’s hunting party had been attacked by wargs. His father, Fingoldyn, had been cornered and tracked away from the group. He had fought bravely, but the vile creatures were too many to escape alone. 

His mother, Erenye, had bathed and tended the wound, but the torn flesh had festered and boiled, turning the sick man’s body hot and cold by turns. They did all they could, but after three days it was not enough. His father had died in the gray light of morning. In his last moments of consciousness, he had commanded Fingolyn to swear to protect and care for his mother and four younger sisters. He swore.

Fingolyn felt as if the rest of his life was shackled with the chains of other’s helplessness; the burden was too great. He stopped abruptly.

“Amman? Amman!?” He cried. The voice was that of a caged animal prodded with hot tongs. He kicked a tree repeatedly, angry at no one, exhausted from being exhausted. He wished to just sink to the ground, let the damp earth support him, hear the leaves whisper under his weight, smell yesterday’s rain coursing through the soil. But he would NOT lay down. He would not allow himself to stop for one second. 

An involuntary shriek of pain escaped him when he kicked the tree a little too hard through his too-small worn down thin leather boots. His whole family needed new ones. They needed new everything. But there was barely money enough for a scrap of bread for the children, let alone new clothes. 

He felt cramped in the middle of the wide open forest. A low roll of thunder drummed somewhere in the distance, and a breeze that smelled of rain and moss turned the leaves light-side-up. Fingolyn knew he should return home, but his numb limbs carried him farther and father from the small hut lost in the tangle of oaks. 

His sharp eyes caught a flash of silent movement, gleaming gold under the darkening sky broken by trees. It was the Prince of Mirkwood, Legolas, the one he had always hated without knowing why. Now he knew. His little sisters would be hungry tonight; they would drink hot water with wild sage as they had the past two nights, trying to keep the biting hunger at bay. The roof would leak in the coming storm, the rough home-spun blankets on the two small beds shared between six people would smell of mildew. The mud would soak through the meager soles of his shoes as he slogged back home. He would hear his mother’s muffled crying in the night. 

The little prince would have a good dinner by a warm fire. He would hear the pleasant drumming of evening rain on a sturdy oaken roof. He would sleep in a soft bed, not waking with fingers stiff with cold, not trying to warm little girls with ebbing body heat. He would be safe, and warm, and comfortable, while Fingolyn’s family--the family his father had entrusted to him--lingered on the edge on an inglorious death. 

The first drops fell from a stone-gray sky, making a hollow tapping sound on the canopy of leaves. 

“Telelle Aran! What have you got there? Nay, do not run from me!”

The last words issued from his throat like an animal growl. He grabbed Legolas by the shoulder, pulling him around. 

“What’s this? It’s a fine pretty thing for a child like you. See you’ve been scratching it up with skill surpassing that you plait your hair with!” Fingolyn jerked a golden braid. 

“What do you want with me? Why must you haunt me like a living plague? Don’t touch me!”

Legolas twitched out of his grasp, making to dart away through the now briskly falling rain, but Fingolyn caught the end of the polished willow bow. 

Fingolyn held it out of his reach. 

“This is too good for you! Given to you freely, like everything else! Never worked for what you have, handed everything as if it were your right just because you were born in a great hall rather than a wooden hut.”

Fingolyn held the bow out, an end in each hand, stretched across his chest. 

“You are nothing more than a title! I’ve kept my family alive with the sweat of my back and tears never shed, and what’ve you done? You killed your mother, stole her life for your own, and now your father cannot look at you, whether you have a mountain of gold or no!”

Legolas’s eyes had a look of terror, hurt that ran so deep he didn’t know how to feel it properly. 

“Please, I’m sorry, I don’t know what...please don’t...I can’t...I’m sorry!”

The rain poured from the blackening sky in earnest now, drenching their clothes and sending chilling rivulets coursing down their skin. 

“You’re sorry?!? That isn’t enough!”

Images flashed through Fingolyn’s mind; he saw his father laughing gaily and chasing his little sisters around their small garden. He smelled the stinging scent of herbs in boiling water as his mother tried desperately to heal Fingoldyn’s mortal wounds, his sisters huddled near the dying fire as rain streaked down the chimney. He heard his mother’s swallowed sobs as she gathered her children to her after her husband took his last shuddering breath. 

“That’s not ENOUGH!”

He couldn’t stop the raging anger once he gave it a moment to peek between the bars of its cage. The raw, bleeding pain and searing anger found their mark in this child, this child who had what seemed like everything. Channeling the tortured feeling and caged rage, he broke the willow bow over his knee, splitting the wood that shimmered in the rain like moon on the river. He flung the pieces at Legolas’s feet. 

“You deserve worse, aran en alnad!” 

When the wood split, Legolas felt as if his bone had snapped. Four years of painstaking work, meticulous care and trial and error, cracked in half in a second. He did not cry out, did not voice the anguish that ripped within. He sank to his knees, holding the broken pieces in trembling hands. 

“Fingolyn!”

A high clear voice cut through the sound of beating rain. 

“Enye! What are you doing here? Go home at once, you should not have come!”

“What have you done?!?”

The young girl looked delicate as a small bird, and in the whipping rain she appeared as if a sparrow tossed in a gail. Her feet were bare, her faded blue dress ragged and sodden, but her gray eyes flamed with anger.

“What have you done?” she repeated, her voice dripping with incredulous accusation. She ran up to them, positioning herself between Legolas and Fingolyn. 

“Why? He has not hurt you! Why must you hate someone needlessly when so much pain in this world already cannot be mended? Go home at once, nanneth sends for you. The baby is ailing, and she needs you to tend to the little girls.”

Fingolyn’s eyes showed no hint of repentance, nor any shred of pity. 

“Fine. Come then, Enye, we must be swift.”

“No! You go. I’ll come in a short while, but I cannot stay in that house one moment longer. Father is not buried yet and oft as I might try I cannot induce his eyes to stay shut, and the little girls won’t stop asking “where is Ada now?” and the baby wails unceasingly and mother tries to hide her own weeping. Besides, I’m not going to leave your poor victim to be drenched alone.”

“As you wish. But if you are lost in the storm I shan't be the one to blame!”

“If you wilfully cut your own eye from your head you would say that you were not the one to blame! Be off, mother is waiting.”

FIngolyn snorted indignantly, but nonetheless he strode off through the muck of sodden leaves and mud, in the general direction of home. 

Legolas felt someone kneeling in front of him. He lifted his face and found his eyes met with a pair of blue-tinged gray ones. They held within them such a well of compassion he felt as if the chilling rain had turned to drops of sunlight. 

“Legolas is your name, is it not? I am called Elyerenye, but most shorten it to just Enye. My brother is a bullying coward when he is angry, but I assure you, through all the thorns he loves his little sisters like his own children. He spoke often of Legolas, calling you Aran En Alnad, with much malice, but always I doubted his harsh words. Look at me.”

As her flowing speech ceased, he held her gaze. The rain streamed down her face and through her long hair, saturating its natural dark brown sheen to midnight black. Her eyes seemed to tell stories he couldn’t read, but knew he wanted to hear. 

“I see now that Fingolyn was wrong, as I suspected. I see in your eyes nothing that I deem worthy of hatred; you hurt almost as much as we do, I see, just in a different way.”

Her eyes drifted to the snapped willow bow. 

“I am so dreadfully sorry. When my brother gets into a passion his innate side of cruelty peers out from the behind the kind--if slightly grudgingly so--brother he is generally.”

She ran her fingers over the ruined bow, still beautiful even in destruction. 

“Now up!” Her voice took on a brisk--but not unkind--tone. 

“We can’t stay lingering in the mud like lost pigs. Up now, come on! I must be off home; I guess you know your way from here?”

She sprang up with an agility that fit her birdlike frame, and yet as she stood she quavered like a river reed in the wind, and sank back to the ground. 

Legolas had not spoken a word since the girl had appeared, out of misty nothingness it seemed. Elyerenye had a way of talking about her that made one want to listen, not caring much what she said, just as long as she kept speaking. Now he was jolted from his trance. 

“Mae govannen, Elyerenye! You are kind and warm indeed, though I know not rightly how you are as you are, being also the sister of Finglolyn. But what ails you? Do stand and show me that you are not dreadfully hurt!”

Legolas reached out a hand to help her up. She took it, and both marvelled at the feel of the other’s hand, Enye’s cold as winter’s first snow and Legolas’s surprisingly warm in the chilled rain. She stood carefully, taking care not to rise too quickly. 

“I am just dizzy, nothing more. It’s just that I’m so...so....” She seemed to be having a battle with herself, pride dueling with necessity. 

“So hungry.”

The words were so low they were almost swallowed up by the pounding of the rain. 

*********

Legolas hadn’t realized how far he had wandered into the woods until he was slogging back. Enye’s hand was so chilled it felt as if the blood in her veins had given up pumping and just stagnated in the cold of the quickly falling dusk. She had insisted that she didn’t need help at first, forcefully rejecting his offer of a hand to hold; “I can walk just fine,” she had said, “i walked here without a babysitter didn't’ I, I most certainly can go a bit farther on my own steam.” But as they made their way slowly through the muck, breath abandoned her time and again till she was gasping for air even at their slow pace. When she almost fell over for the third time, Legolas caught her hand and held it firmly. He looked into her exhausted gray eyes. There was the same pride that manifested in Fingolyn as base cruelty, but in her it took on a regal quality, a whisper of power hidden in the girl’s emaciated form. He knew she didn’t want to admit weakness. “No one can help being hungry.” She relinquished a small smile, and allowed him to steady her as they walked. 

He had refused to let her go back to her own little shack. 

“There’s no food for you there, and you won’t see morning without some. Come with me, I can sneak us in the kitchen, I know where the boards creek. No one will know we were in there, it’ll be dark and it’s passed supper; everyone will be kept plenty busy with wine.” She was too hungry to come up with a suitable excuse to refuse. She had tended the baby since dawn the previous morning, Fingolyn could take his fair turn. 

So that is how there came to be two small shadows slipping through the skirts of the forest and right up to the herb garden gate. 

“There’s no way but to jump it, the hinges creak dreadfully.”

Legolas wrapped a hand around the slick soaked wood and leapt over the gate, landing more lightly than the stealthiest cat. Enye summoned her last bit of strength, left over from dinner two nights ago, and did the same. Legolas peeked through a small knotted hole in the old kitchen door--”like a keyhole but better for spying” he told Enye--and when the coast was clear they slipped into the huge kitchen. The coals in the massive cooking fireplace were burnt almost to white ash, leaving the corners of the expansive room shadowed in mysterious blackness. Legolas knelt in front of the fire and gently blew on the dwindling sparks, carefully channeling the air to the most promisingly red pockets of heat. He threw a few small sticks from the colossal black pail of wood next to the fireplace into the tentative flames, and when they eagerly engulfed the offerings, he added some larger splitter prickly logs. 

“There’s a nice blaze for you! Sit, your dress will dry out in two blinks with that cheery fire for help.” 

Enye sat, and he flitted noiselessly to the other side of the kitchen, carefully dodging places she assumed must creek when stepped on. He was back in a moment with two fluffy white rolls, two strips of dried venison, and a tiny wheel of cheese the size of a fist, all wrapped up in a small blue and white checked cloth. 

“It’s not what one could classify as fancy, but it’s good all the same.”

Legolas settled down opposite her in front of the fireplace, spread out the cloth between them, and arranged the things nicely. He’d barely finished unrolling the cloth before Enye was devouring the strip of dried meat like a dog forgotten in a kennel for a week. Legolas was relatively positive that she didn’t breath for the next five minutes; she certainly didn’t have time to speak. Finally she looked up, sheepish remorse in her eyes.

“You must think me awfully unladylike. I’m not much better than a lap dog begging at a table too high for me.”

“Why in the wood would I care if you’re ladylike or not? And you are, whether or not you deem yourself so.” He broke his loaf in half and handed her one side. She smiled, a true smile this time, not marred by wary pride.

“Hannad di il nin gur, Legolas.” She took a deep breath, as if bracing herself for a blow, “I really must be off home now. Nanneth will loose the last bit of her ebbing sanity if I’m not back before nightfall,”

“Well, I’m sorry to break it to you, but night has very much fallen. So I think you can just give up the battle.” Legolas’s crystal blue eyes danced with teasing mischief. “Just stay a bit longer!”

Enye laughed with a note of the childlike pleasure that should have more often frequented her young face. 

“Just a bit longer then, aran en alnad.”

Legolas grinned; the “insult” from her lips felt warm and comfortable, because she meant it as such. 

The children lay on their backs on the hard stone floor, watching the ghosts of flame in the shape of blue black shadows dance across the rough-hewn beams of the ceiling. They truly did intend to stay just for a moment more, so you can imagine their frenzied confusion when they jolted awake the next morning, dashed from sweet slumber by the shriek of the terribly surprised cook who came suddenly upon two children sleeping side by side, arms unconsciously around each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aran en alnad~king of nothing  
> aman~why  
> Hannad di il nin gur~thank you with all my heart


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is from Enye's perspective. I know this is supposed to be Legolas's memories, but I thought this chapter was necessary to put everything going forward into context. Also fun to writeXD Hope you like it!

Enye rocked the little girl, trying desperately to get her to sleep. The four year old Erea refused to succumb to the sleep she needed, enjoying the attention she got when she made a fuss about bedtime. She discovered when she was much younger that when she cried at night her older sister would hold her and rock her and sing to her until she drifted off, and she used that knowledge to her advantage. Poor Enye was about to fall asleep sitting up; her vision was getting blurry and her arms were all pins and needles from holding the little girl. 

The other little girls were fast asleep beside her on the bed they shared, and Fingolyn was stretched out on the other small lumby mattress, mouth hanging open, limbs splayed across the excuse for a bed, deep in slumber. Of course he was out cold. He was very, very drunk. That was becoming ever more common; he had developed a tendency to “drown his sorrows.” Most of the time it didn’t directly harm anything, as long as he drank AFTER he found some food. But now and again some little thing would rub him wrong when he was already overly intoxicated and he would fly into a rage, yelling and threatening, making the little girls cry. When he got into such a state, Enye would try her best to make her voice calm and even, send her sisters to go play or work in the garden, and try to keep busy and wait out the storm. The worst times were when he wanted a fight. He would scream anything that came to mind at her, trying to get a reaction. He had never actually struck her, but she shuddered at the memory of the threats. The next day, when he found his wits, he would apologize profusely, swear he’d never do it again. But, lo and behold, before the week was past he would be knocked flat with stolen wine. Most of the time he stole it, but still their small stash of coins dwindled into a bottle. 

Legolas always flew into his own rage when the subject came up, vowing to put an arrow through Fingolyn’s skull the very moment she gave permission. But after all, Fingolyn was her brother, and she loved him. But slowly the love was drowned out by fear. 

She hated that she always ended up spilling her troubles to Legolas. She wanted to have light conversation, to laugh and sing, to stop thinking about the hard parts. But he listened, and she couldn’t help talking. She saw in his eyes a deep concern and fear for her. She smiled at the thought of his concern. She herself didn’t know how deeply she needed to be taken care of, to relinquish responsibility to someone else for a bit. She had been mother and sister and servant and cook and maid and nurse for the last four years. Her mother hadn’t lasted more than a week after her father died. Fingolyn called it a chest cold, Enye called it a broken heart. Either way she was dead, and Fingolyn and Enye were left to raise three little girls on their own, stowing away their own grief to be dealt with another time. 

She was exhausted, both physically and mentally, drained from the day and the year. She wished that she could put Erea to sleep and then slip out to meet her best friend, to let him work whatever magic always made her troubles seem to disappear when she was with him. But of course it couldn’t be, the moon was rising and it must be almost midnight. Just a few days till the full moon. 

Enye gently laid the child in her arms in the bed beside her sisters. The girl was FINALLY asleep. Enye lowered herself to the bare wood floor as quietly as she possibly could, which meant utterly silent. The summer night was warm, so she didn’t need the beautiful warm blanket that she kept hidden under the girls’ bed, the light blanket that Legolas had given her last winter when she had accidentally referred to sleeping on the floor. 

“Do you mean to tell me that you sleep on the floor in the dead of winter in that little excuse for a house?” he had said. The next day she found a thin, but surprisingly warm blanket, shimmering as if woven with strands of moonlight but with the heavy warmth of a knitted shawl, on the front step with a note pinned to it. She knew not why the little scrap of paper had brought tears to her eyes with such a simple message: “Allur, Enye.” 

As she lay on the ground that familiar warm fluffy feeling settled in her stomach. Even as the pleasant feeling crept in she drove it out. She knew whatever ideas made her smile without meaning to were absolutely not returned. Enye refused to let herself want or miss or even hope. She clamped her eyes shut and was massively annoyed to discover that she couldn’t sleep even though she was exhausted. It’s none of my business to go wanting things I’ll never have. Just a recipe for disappointment, she thought. 

She was disappointed anyway.

Legolas had been her best friend for four years now. It was hard to believe that that first time she found him, sitting in the rain with his short life’s work broken in the mud, she was only eleven. What a difference is made in four years. Now, at fifteen, he was still her best friend, but now that word ‘friend’ had an edge of sting to it. 

Her life at home was far from idyllic, trying to care for a whole family, filling the place of a mother with only fifteen years of life behind her. She had met Legolas in the short week between her parents’ deaths. He had been such a comfort when her life closed in around her, promising no respite for years and years. He had made sure her family was fed when Fingolyn was sick or drunk and couldn’t hunt and she was stuck caring for her siblings with no time to search for food. She knew the risk he ran; his father could go off at anything, not least of which sneaking the king’s supplies to a family of far inferior rank; Legolas had been careful to keep Enye anonymous, and his foraging in the kitchen was a guarded secret. He had pretended he didn’t see when she cried as they walked; he knew how she hated to seem weak. He had been what she needed. 

He still was. 

But that was all, a friend, a companion, a brother. One day he had actually said she was “like a sister.” 

She squirmed, rolled over on the hard floor, trying to keep her unruly thoughts in order. She actually pinched herself, the strictly rational half of her mind lecturing the infuriatingly sentimental half. “Why must I always carry on so on the edge of sleep?” she thought. “I should count myself lucky to have what I do without letting my fancy chase things I should let alone. Hope serves no purpose when its ideal is ridiculous and impossible.” 

Finally the sheer exhaustion of the day set in, and she drifted to sleep. Her dreams were vivid and pleasant; she dreamed of a friend who was more than a brother, a life with someone who loved her as much as a sister...and yet differently. 

You can imagine her frustration, then, when she woke in the bleary hours of dawn to the sound of a family who needed a mother. She rose wearily. Mother, sister, friend. That was all, and that would have to do. Hope for something more was ridiculous.

She hoped anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~ Allur=Sleep well


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is kinda short but I spent hours trying to get the emotions right. I'm trying to make sure the motivations make sense...how am I doing? I know personally when you see a relationship or a lot of relationships crash and burn, it can be very conflicting whether you was a relationship or not. A lot of people have something like PTSD when they try to have their own relationship, because they are so afraid that the same bad thing will happen to them. I was trying to paint that picture here:) Hope you like it!  
> P.S. Is it too gushy? I am trying to make it realistic without being overdone...

The soft damp soil felt cool and comforting under his fingers. The stream bubbled on, cheerful and yet peaceful. The emotion he was swamped in was just barely out of the realm of words to trace. It was wistful anger, it was a contemplative intense quick-kindled but slow-burning feeling, somewhere between rage and helplessness and desire and searching. Legolas was thinking about his mother. Of course he did not remember her; he had shared only a few hours of life with her. But he had a vague picture of her in his mind, a figure clothed with features he had gleaned from one conversation with his father many years ago. 

When he was very young, only three or four, Thranduil had given him a choked description of Eluriel. Even as young as he had been, Legolas had gotten the impression that the king was speaking to Eluriel rather than Legolas, painting a picture for his own eyes. Legolas had almost felt as if he was eavesdropping, though he had been seated just at his father’s feet. 

“Eyes like summer chicory, blue and sparkling. Those eyes always seemed to be laughing, some little joke dancing privately in their owner. She was eternally smiling; nothing ever chilled her beautiful summer for long. She wasn’t crushed until the end. She wasn’t afraid to die, nay, she only grieved that she would never know her son.” 

His voice had caught, a twinge of grief obscuring the last words. 

“Her hair was like the sun streaming through the leaves, light and flowing, with the sheen of whitegold. Slim as a willow wand, and yet full of a bubbling spring of laughter that made her presence feel much greater than her small frame. She was so beautiful. She should have lived many a long merry year in the wood.”

Legolas had looked up from the small wooden figures in his hands (he took especial delight in making tiny carven horses do acrobatics) to see his father’s face, usually so stoic and regal, bathed in tears of unspeakable longing and desperate grief. The elfling had known, even so young, that to speak would be perilous. He had remained quiet, but every word of Thranduil’s description had been imprinted in his mind; he treasured the image of a mother who had loved him, a hazy but lovely picture of a woman with sun in her hair and laughter in her eyes. 

As he sat on the bank of the river, twelve years later, that image of a long-ago mother filled his mind. He lay back on the sweetgrass, letting the perfect blue of the sky and the careless rippling of running water absorb him. And yet that feeling would not depart, that contemplative smoldering helpless anger. He was angry because Eluriel was dead, and because of what she had destroyed in her going. 

His father had apparently never quite gotten used to him. “Get out of my sight” was a phrase that felt printed into his skin from being hit with it so many times. There were the good times--or the times that could have been good--with his father, but after age twelve or so he didn’t care to let times be good even if they wanted to. If his father didn’t want him, then Legolas would not be gotten. It didn’t matter if sometimes the king wanted to have some kind of relationship, he burned that bridge a long time ago; Legolas wasn’t about to rebuild it at his father’s whim. And yet he wanted to so, so much. 

Legolas sighed audibly. He hated being in this frame of mind, mixing anger with weakness, but he just couldn’t help it. He was sick of thinking about Thranduil; it only made him sadder. He cast around in his mind for something light and pleasant to think about. 

A girl with dark brown hair and beautiful gray eyes, small and slight but bubbling over with life. 

He actually groaned out loud. Not that! Why could he not think of something else, something not complicated, something that didn’t make him smile uncontrollably and yet make him so angry and hopeless. 

He sat up, breaking the trance of the hypnotic sky-river combination. That was the other reason that Eluriel made him boil over with something akin to rage. Even as the anger took hold he knew he was really angry at himself, angry at himself for slowly ruining the best thing he had ever had. “But I don’t have her, and that is the whole…” he buried his face in cupped hands and asked no one in a muffled tone, “why am I like this?” He was alone with the babbling river to drown him out, so he just said it out loud. He knew why, he just didn’t want to think it. 

People can be lost, love can be smashed, grief can destroy whole lives, irrational blame can be a stone dropped into one life but rippling into many. Thranduil had married someone perfect, a woman beautiful and kind and so alive. But Eluriel had died, had left her husband and son. Her light had gone out of the world, and Thranduil was left alone and bitter and angry. 

Legolas squeezed his eyes shut and tried to stop thinking, but the words wouldn’t go away.

I can’t lose her. It can’t go the same way.

He knew he had no power over life and death, but he liked to think that they wouldn’t hurt him if he didn’t let them. 

I will NOT let her in, he reminded himself for the thousandth time. If I don’t let her in, she can’t hurt me. If I don’t let her come, she can’t leave. 

So he did his best to keep her close, but keep her out. 

The best days were the days they spent together; with her he could release, be alive without fear or apology. He loved to hear her talk, to listen to the lilting flow of her voice and be allowed to share her confidences. He snatched every chance to help her in any way; he knew how hard her life was. More often than not she refused firmly. “Charity” was a sticking point with Enye. She wanted to be understood, but she hated to be pitied. Now and then, though, when her need was truly dire, she would accept a little help. 

She was not the image of natural beauty; she did not have the raven locks of Luthien TInuviel or the flowing golden hair of Galadriel. Her eyes never seemed to decide between blue and greed and gray. To some she might have even looked sickly, for she had been half-starved for years. And yet she was somehow singularly striking. She was simply so ALIVE. She was strong, almost battle-hardened, and yet delicate and sensitive. 

And to him, she WAS beautiful.

He pinched himself. 

Stop that, he thought. You’re trying to keep her strictly a friend, not go daydreaming about her HAIR. Stop that, right now. 

He stood up, slinging the bow that lay beside him over his back. It was beautiful, shining in the fast-fading light, carven with swirling designs. He had not forgotten the one that Fingolyn had broken all those years ago, but he had poured all of the anger and joy and sadness and passion of the last four years into this creation. He walked down a length of the river before veering off into the forest, crossing the red fallen leaves as silently as if they were no more than soft fur carpet. He found a knot in a tree, no bigger than a fist, and filled it with all the arrows in his quiver. He had practiced every day for three years, and it showed. As he threw his hand back again and again, fit the thin notch to the string and sent the shaft whistling through the air, he actually managed to forget. Well, not necessarily forget…It was more that when he was alone with his bow and quiver, it felt like there was nothing that needed forgetting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 'Chicory', also called 'cornflower' is a very pigmented blue flower with hints of purple sometimes. It looks sky blue, and it usually blooms between June and August. Search 'images of chicory", it is a GORGEOUS flower:)


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know if the timeline is clear, but Legolas and Enye are around 17 in this chapter. Let me know what you think! And don't worry, if you hate romance and think romantic tension is the most cringey thing imaginable, there will possibly be some other parts. Lmk if you want to see other things than their (doubly fictional) relationshipXD If you have read my other works though, you know I do love to write my romances haha

“Shut your mouth!”

“Why, you think your ratty little sister would look fancy in the great hall on that little blond prince’s lap?”

“I said, SHUT YOUR MOUTH!”

Fingolyn’s voice was slurred. The boy in front of him couldn’t be more than seventeen, but he was clearly just trying to get a reaction, obviously not understanding the peril of the situation. 

“The girl is trash, and you know it! Always following around that little prince like he’s going to drop some scraps for her! But it’s your whole family, trash. You’re too drunk to feed your family, got some starving little girls at home? And you call yourself the man of the family. Ha! Might as well let that rat sister of yours run things. She’d do it better than you! Maybe she’d get the little prince to feed you all, since clearly the money is going straight into a mug! Saw her royal friend teachin’ her to shoot with that fancy bow of his. Have you seen the way that boy looks at her? Yeh don’t watch out you’ll have a royal little niece or nephew on your hands. But really, she could outshoot you with a week of practice!”

The boy was laughing, but he could tell he was treading a thin line. He never would have invented this risk on his own; in all honesty he was appalled by the words coming out of his mouth. There were so many layers of abuse going on, the message had gotten garbled with random insults that didn’t even go together or follow a coherent pattern; they just bashed anything and everything that might get under Fingolyn’s skin. No, the boy was doing it because he was a runty thing with the reputation of a coward, and he had set his crooked little heart on joining a group of older, more “respected”, drinkers. These boys (for boys they were, no more than twenty), had given him an ultimatum of acceptance. If he delivered the speech of pointed insults they had concocted to the surly-looking man over there, and didn’t get his eyes ripped out, he would become an esteemed member of the group. Fingolyn, in a drunken rage a few days previously, had beaten one of their members to a pulp, and they were eager for revenge. 

So there was this young boy, standing there laughing, hitting Fingolyn with insults right in the soft spot, the raw place that already stung without someone else inflaming it. The guilt for his drinking, for starving the little girls with negligence, for failing his father (as you recall, his father’s last words had been ones swearing Fingolyn to take care of his family), was an open wound. Not to mention his sister’s “friendship” with the prince. That was a sticking point if there ever was one. Ellyerenye, HIS SISTER, getting attached to his nemesis, the irrational object of his deep-rooted hatred? Fingolyn could barely see straight, but he had enough wits left to put his fist through the boy’s eye. 

After a very one-sided fight, Fingolyn strode (or staggered) out of the small house where shady people came to drink stolen wine, leaving his victim passed out with an unrecognizable mutilated face on the floor. 

He had one thought in his mind. Hadn’t the insults all included Enye? In his drunken state, she was inseparably associated with his shame. He would find her. What he would do once he caught her was still a violent haze in the back of his intoxicated mind. 

Finally, after much angry but aimless wandering, Fingolyn arrived at his little shack of a house. He burst through the door, yelling something, he wasn’t even quite sure what. The little girls burst into tears and all ran to Enye, clinging to her skirt and the little one reaching up to be held. 

“Enye! Come here!”

His voice was rough and grating.

“This isn’t you, just sleep a little, you’ll feel better.” Enye called up every ounce of strength to keep her voice steady and calm. 

“NO! COMEHERE!” the words joined into an angry slur. 

She gently disconnected herself from the little girls, instructing them to stay on the bed. Fingolyn grabbed her wrist and yanked her away, pulling her out the door and throwing her down outside.

“I am the head of the family!!!”

“Of course you are!” Her voice broke without her permission. 

“You are a disgrace! You embarrassed me, gave our family a bad reputation fooling around with that...that...Legolas!! You know how I hate him, you know that he has everything we don’t! When you follow him around like a dog you make us look like beggars!”

Tears slid down her face, but she didn’t notice. This wasn’t the big brother she remembered. This was a monster who didn’t even know what he was doing.

“I provide for our family, NOT YOU!” His voice had risen to almost a shriek. 

She was on her feet now, a long-suppressed anger rising to meet his. She didn’t even know what she was about to say before it was out in the open. She was gripped in years of broken loneliness and anger, accidentally releasing the pain and abandonment she had kept inside to deal with “another time.” 

“No! I raised the little girls! They are terrified of you! You let them starve, because YOU can’t face YOURSELF! The only reason your sisters are alive is because of me, and yes, Legolas!” 

Stars exploded behind her left eye. The side of her face felt like it had been doused in boiling water. She staggered back at the blow, shocked. He had threatened in the past, but she never thought he would actually strike her.

He hit her again, hard, forcing the sight from her eyes. She fell to the ground, feeling the leaves crunch beneath her, crinkle as she grabbed at them. She couldn’t see, but she could feel the sharp pain of a hard boot in her side. It couldn’t have been more than a minute, but for what felt like an age there was nothing but agonizing impact. She couldn’t breath, couldn’t see, but she had enough presence of mind to be incredibly surprised. Fingolyn had always apologized for his fits of rage. Her friendship with “Aran el Alnad” as Fingolyn called him had always been a sticking point, but never caused anything like this. He had never before brought up who cared for the family, always seeming glad to pass off responsibilities to her. The physical pain was far less sharp than the blow of realizing that he did not love his sister. 

Something hard cracked into the side of her head, and she knew no more. 

***********

Legolas drew up sharply. A strange sound, like a whimper in the distance. He didn’t take much notice; a noise was just a noise, with many possible sources. He carried a lumpy parcel in a checkered cloth. The burlap-like texture was ruff on his hands, even as calloused as they had become in the last six years. The bag was stocked with a little picnic, bread and cheese and the famous fall apples of Mirkwood. He was heading toward the sagging little house in the clearing of Beech trees; he thought he would collect Enye and take her down to the stream for a picnic. He knew she would only accept food--or, in her eyes, “charity”--if it was disguised under some unrelated pretense. 

His father had finally caught on to who Legolas had been seeing for the last six years. Legolas had done an admirable job keeping Enye hushed up, and for good reason. His mind wandered to last week’s conversation: 

“You’re courting a little woodland brat? How could you be so foolish? A peasant girl without a cent or even a surname? You disgrace us!”

A snitch had reported to Thranduil on a bet. 

“No Adar, not courting. But even if I were, what need have we of money? What difference could a name possibly make? She is-”

“SILENCE!”

“She is not a woodland brat, but a wonderful kind friend.”

“Ha! Friend. You would say that wouldn’t you.”

“I would, because I am not a liar.”

“GET OUT OF MY SIGHT.”

For once that cold order was welcome indeed. 

Legolas tried to shake off the memory. It had no bearing on the moment, so why waste care on it. But the crying noise broke into his thoughts once more; it was not fading but growing as he slipped through the trees towards Enye’s house. Suddenly his keen elvish ears picked up violent slurred bellowing, and even--no, please don’t let it be so--thuds as if something were being kicked. 

Then he saw them.

Enye was on the ground, her long hair loose and wild, red leaves caught in contrast against the dark brown. She was curled up in a defensive position on the forest floor, the side of her face bloody, eyes squeezed shut and a pitiful cry escaping her. Fingolyn stood over her, drunk and raging, punctuating his tirade with a vicious kick now and again. 

Legolas didn’t know what happened next; all there was was blinding rage, acute like years of anger condensed into one flaming point. 

An outsider would have seen a figure dart out of the trees, swift as a springing cat and silent as a shadow. If they blinked, they wouldn’t see the arrow ripped from the quiver and strung to the bow. 

“If you touch her, I will twitch my finger and you will have an arrow out the back of your skull.”

His voice was not loud, but the venom in it was the equivalent to a shriek. 

“You are only living at this moment because once upon a time your sisters loved you. But if you try to stop me from taking this one, the sun will rise tomorrow on your dead body.”

Fingolyn blinked. His mouth dropped open, he shut it, and then repeated the process a few times. 

“If you move you will die. Don’t even think about being quicker than me, you’ll never know what hit you.”

Legolas knelt down beside Enye, fallen red leaves barely whispering. The elf had the gift of silence, seeming light as air when he wished to be; he could walk on the surface of deep snow without breaking the top, run on dry leaves without making a sound. To one who didn’t know him he looked perfectly calm, but his hands shook as he gently pressed his fingers to her wrist, searching for a pulse. She was unconscious, a nasty cut splitting her cheek to the bone, sending a trail of blood down her face, giving the unnerving illusion of a face split in half. A patch of red was blooming across the side of her worn-out gray dress. 

Speaking no word to Fingolyn, Legolas lifted Enye easily into his arms. Her naturally slim build was exacerbated by years of short rations, and she felt no heavier than a child. 

“I will send someone in a few hours to bring food for the little girls. You will accept it, and you will give it to your sisters. If you do not do this, you will regret it tremendously.”

With that Legolas disappeared back into the trees, carrying the girl who had at last been broken. 

He slipped in through the garden gate, then set her halfway down to open the thick wooden kitchen door. He almost smiled to think of the first time they had gone that way, six years ago, on his eleventh birthday. But when she whimpered even in unrestful sleep at the gentle impact, the slight smile was wiped away. 

The cook was bustling around the kitchen, alone thank heaven. The cook knew Enye; after all, it was she who had found the two children fast asleep by the fire on the first night they met. 

“Please, fetch a doctor! There is no time to tell all that has happened now, but if you get the doctor and get him to my chamber without being discovered I shall wash every dish in the kitchen for a year!”

The cook was a good-natured woman with something of a soft spot for Legolas. He had spent many hours scampering around the kitchen and watching the busy cooking and cleaning work when he was young; she had probably spent more time with the little prince than his father had. 

Through some miraculous combination of luck, fate, and knowing where the floors creaked, Legolas managed to get her to his room. He laid her down on the mattress, looked helplessly around for something to bandage her head with, and in combined despair and resignation just perched lightly on the bed beside her, taking her hand in his. After what must have been an hour but felt like an age and a half the doctor finally arrived. 

The doctor was called Elodan, and he was highly skilled in the leechcraft. He was kind as summer, and had the gift of an almost uncanny perception, seeming at times to read a person’s thoughts. 

He brought with him clean linen bandages as well as a wonderfully effective pale green salve made with a combination of herbs and spring sap and Athelas. He applied this with meticulous gentleness to the slashing cut down the side of her face, before producing a thin but razor sharp bone needle made from the antlers of the white deer singular to Mirkwood. The material was renowned for its strength even when whittled down to an eighth of a finger’s thickness, and its quality of never-tarnishing nor wearing down. Elodan threaded a thin strand through the eye of the needle. Legolas shuddered as the doctor deftly sewed the wound closed, leaving a line of small neat stitches tracing a black line down her cheekbone. 

Elodan then proceeded to gently press his fingers down the length of her ribcage, feeling for a break in the evenly spaced bones. When he reached the red stain in her light dress he winced and his face grew grave. 

“The bone is separated and has come slightly through the skin. With a tremendous amount of luck she will come through it relatively unharmed, but she must not be moved for at least a week, and then not far and not on her own. It appears that whatever happened-” Here he bent a piercing look on Legolas, who had refused to give any details about either Enye or her attacker “did more damage than the culprit intended or understood. If the damage was fully intended, however, the attacker would face the King’s harsh judgement if he was revealed.”

Legolas didn’t realize how hard he was squeezing Enye’s hand until the doctor gently laid his own over their locked fingers. 

“This girl is important to you...you have found something you do not wish to lose perhaps?”

“Certainly! A very excellent friend.” He stressed the word friend possibly over much, for Elodan’s stare did not become LESS intense, edged with a bit of skeptical laughter dancing in the corners of his eyes and hiding in the slight raise of his eyebrows, even as pity and concern played over his face. 

“Of course. A very good friend. And that’s all.”

The doctor said this as a statement, but it was a question. It was not one that Legolas intended to answer. 

“I thank you for what you have done for her. I am indebted to you, and will gladly do anything you wish if it could settle the score!”

Elodan instructed Legolas to leave for a while to give him time to set and bandage the wound, but as Legolas laid his hand on the doorknob, the doctor spoke.

“Call her what she is. Fear no longer.” 

“I don’t know what you mean-”

“You understand me perfectly. Call her what she is, and forget the fears you harbor. Then the score will be settled.” 

With that he opened the dark oak door, and soundlessly departed, leaving Legolas with altogether too many uncomfortable thoughts in his head.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "And in time  
> As one reminds the other of past  
> A life lived much too fast to hold onto  
> How am I losing you?
> 
> And so I cry  
> As I hold you for the last time in this life  
> This life I tried so hard to give to you  
> What would you have me do?"
> 
> ~Mumford & Sons

She was much worse. Elodan had said that she would come through it with a tremendous amount of luck, and she had had none. Legolas laid the back of his hand to her cheek; it was flaming flushed and alarmingly hot to the touch. He stroked her face so gently his fingers barely touched her skin. She shifted in sleep but whimpered at the motion; less than half conscious she grabbed the hand that traced her face in both her own and held it to her chest. He sat on the edge of the mattress till his legs were all pins and needles. He couldn’t bring himself to extricate himself from her fevered vice-like grip. 

At last Elodan came upon them. 

“Make her let go of you laddie. I need to tend to her.”

Reluctantly Legolas pulled his hand away and stood up. The doctor gently drew back the coverlet. For necessity’s sake Enye wore pants made for a younger elf boy (as I have mentioned she was very small for a girl of seventeen summers) and a wide linen cloth wrapped around her breast. Below that was a bandage plastered to her rib cage. Elodan peeled the bandage away as gently and slowly as could be contrived, but even with his utmost care Enye cried out pitifully between painful dreams and worse waking. 

Legolas’s heart sank. A patch of skin about the size of two hands--if skin it could be called--was a terrible dark purple color. The gash in the center of the sickly patch was infected and angry red lines trailed from it. 

“It’s blood poisoning. The break became infected.” Elodan said it in a matter of fact manner, but his face was grim and his eyes showed less than a little hope. 

“What chance does she have?” his throat was tightening and words were hard all of a sudden.

“I would get her sisters if I were you. Get them here as soon as possible.”

“Of course they’ll want to see her, Enye’s been gone for a week now-” Legolas’s voice sounded hollow and fake even to his own ears.

“You know what I meant. They need time to say goodby.”

************

Aria watched the elf with interest, studying him as they walked through the forest. She could see why Enye had been roped in. His golden-blonde hair, catching the afternoon sun, was plaited neatly in small fishnet braids along the sides of his head. His face was well cut, angular but not sharp. He was tall, slim and graceful, moving with utter silence. But what really drew her attention was his eyes. Piercing, vigilant, blue as a cloudless summer sky; they were eyes that did not miss one single detail of his surroundings. She had to admit that he was not at all bad to look at. Aria had always surveyed Legolas with something akin to awe and wonder; she had spent precious little time with him, but now and again Enye would allow Aria to accompany her to meet this boy. She never spoke much, just sat quietly and watched and listened. It was most amusing to see her sister fallen so far beyond return into the arms of this “friend.” She liked to see Enye’s eyes dance with combined joy and yearning, and she saw the same mirrored in Legolas’s eyes. Several times Aria had informed Enye of this obviously returned feeling, but Enye always told her to hush and that she was too young to know anything about the matter. 

Aria disagreed. She would have given anything to see Eyne happy; Aria knew what a hard life she led, and she resented Legolas for not making Enye happier. Enye said she was too young to understand, but she was fourteen, and that was plenty old enough to be very annoyed that this gorgeous elf prince who had obviously fallen hard for her sister wouldn’t do anything about it. 

Now he had missed his chance. 

Aria felt the hard lump rising in her throat again, the twisting feeling in her stomach. She would not cry, she told herself for the hundredth time. She had to be strong for Elli and Erra. They were only nine and six, and they needed her. But she needed Enye more than anyone in the world. She remembered her mother, but not well. The memories had faded in the past five years, and slowly Enye had become both mother and sister. Aria almost broke just thinking about losing her. 

The little girls trailed behind her; Elli, the youngest, was already in tears and Erra was clearly on the verge. Legolas was looking straight ahead, face seemingly devoid of emotion. Aria had enough wits to tell that he was faking it. 

Finally they arrived at the great hall, and Legolas motioned her a few steps away from the little girls. 

“Your sister is...you know why you’re here. My father is barely reconciled to her staying here, and he would lock us all up for a decade if he found a group of crying little girls wandering through his halls. Can you keep the little ones quiet?”

“Of course I can!” Aria’s defiance caught him off guard; her eyes flamed with a grief edged with anger.   
“But you have to promise me something.”

“And what is that, Neth Aria?”

“If you let my sister go without telling her you love her, Valar help me I will knife you in your sleep. You’ve strung her along long enough, heaven knows why, but stop now. Do you understand me?”

“Tell her I--- what do you--- strung her---what?”

“Don’t pretend you don’t catch my drift. I’m not so young and fragile as you two seem to think. You’ve loved her since she was younger than I am now. Tell her so, or, as I mentioned afore, you will be knifed in your sleep.”

Legolas did understand. It was true, everything she said. It was all miserably true. 

“I will.”

“You had better.”

After a very uncomfortable and tiptoed walk through great oaken halls, a walk that included Aria having to block the little girls’ airways multiple times, they reached the room where Enye tossed and turned in shallow feverish dreams. Aria felt her stomach flip over and sink to her toes. This did not look like a girl who would see the sunrise. 

Elli and Erra ran to their sister with cries of “Enye! Wake up we’re here!”   
Enye stirred, looking dazed. Aria and Legolas both grabbed one of the little girls in an attempt to keep them from leaping right onto Enye’s bed. 

“Let them come, I’ve missed them terribly.” Enye’s voice was quiet but not weak. Aria was beyond grateful that she was coherent; if Enye had to go, she shouldn’t go without knowing that her girls loved her. And Legolas loved her. Aria eyed him with something between desperation, disdain, awe, malice, and love. Needless to say it was a complicated look. 

Enye kissed the little girls, stroked their hair, squeezed their little hands. She wiped away their tears with fingers that shook, from fever or emotion it was hard to tell. 

“I might yet come home! Maybe just a week or two and I’ll be mended. Don’t look so, girls! I am not a cold corpse yet, and don’t intend to be for years and years. I love you too much to just walk out on life like that! A drunk fool won’t take-” she caught herself “I won’t be leaving any time soon.”

Aria hoped beyond hope that she spoke the truth, but doubted it mightily. She could tell that this cheery facade, even remaining conscious, was a tremendous effort. Finally Enye untangled herself from the little girls; “Aria, come here. I’ve missed you so dreadfully!” Enye gave Legolas a quick look and he understood; “come thithen iell, there must be something pleasant in the kitchen. You can come back to your sister in a while.” 

Aria came slowly. She knew that if she moved quickly or spoke or breathed at all really she would burst into tears, and she wished to have a quiet tear-free talk. 

“Does it hurt terribly?”

“Not badly!” By her look, Enye might as well have said the sky was orange. 

“I’m not a baby. Please Enye, give me truth in all matters today.”

“True enough. Yes, it hurts so very much.” Enye closed her eyes and her eyebrows drew together as if in pain. 

“Do you really think you’ll come home?”

“I don’t know Neth.”

“You said you’d tell me the truth.”

“I swear, that is truth itself. I don’t know. Sometimes I feel as if I truly am mending, and others as if life is floating in front of my eyes, but not in me. I don’t know.” her voice trailed into a sigh. Her eyes opened and their soft gray took on a steely quality.   
“Tell me of Fingolyn.”

“He is drunk most days, though somehow he manages to bring in enough food to keep us out of a coffin, but not more. Legolas has come a few times with food, for which we are tremendously grateful. I do believe Fingolyn is dreadfully sorry, but I couldn’t care less about his miserable little feelings. He could live or die or be eaten or rot for all I care. He is nothing to me anymore besides the one who keeps Elli and Erra halfway alive. But I hate him Enye, I hate him so incredibly much, and I hate that I hate him. I want to love him but I can’t love someone who did THIS to you!”

Enye’s eyes held such pain in them it made one hurt even to look at them. 

“I don’t blame you, but I do hope that you can forgive him someday. Personally I don’t care so much about what he did to me as what it will do to you and the little girls if I am gone.”

“And what it would do to Legolas.” 

Enye’s look took on a gleam of urgency.

“Aria, promise me that if...if it goes ill for me, you must find a way to keep Legolas from killing our brother. Get one or the other of them away somewhere they can’t find each other, at least for a bit. They will keep you all alive if I can’t, and I won’t have them knocking each other’s lights out over something that can’t be mended with a thousand words or blows. Swear?”

“I’ll try my very hardest, but Legolas is a bit more than a skinny girl of fourteen summers can handle, especially when he’s angry and you’re involved. He’ll never get over you, you know.”

Enye’s face changed to one of bitterness. 

“I’m sure it will be hard for him to get over someone who has been practically a sister to him.”

“You know what I mean, Enye.”

“I do, and you’re wrong.”

“I am most certainly not wrong.”

Enye sighed, and her eyes drifted closed once more. 

“If only you were right.”

“I am!”

Enye laughed, but cried out and grabbed at her side. Quickly she was herself again.

“I forgot how stubbornly argumentative you can be!”

She stroked Aria’s board-straight light brown hair. 

“I’m stubborn because I’m right and this is too important for you to ignore. I’ll prove it to you. In a moment I will go find Elli and Erra and will keep them busy. I won’t even have to ask him to go see you, he just will and you know it. Just see what happens, alright?”

Enye smiled a weary smile. 

“Do what you like, thithen iell.”

“I do love you so very very much. Please come home…”

Aria squeezed her eyes shut; she had made it this far without crying, she could go a little longer.

“My dearest darling girl…” Enye cupped her sister’s face in one hand, stroking Aria’s cheek with her thumb. 

That did it; she broke. She cried for an unreasonable amount of time. After all, what could you expect? What with living with a violently drunk brother, caring for two terrified little girls, and spending every waking minute hoping for her sister’s recovery, Aria was just about done in. 

Enye gently combed her fingers through the girl’s hair, whispering to her in Sindarin until she finally reigned herself in. 

“Dhene, Enye.”

With that, Aria slipped out before she had the chance to break down again.

***********

Legolas knelt by her bed, looking into those dark gray eyes. The moment Aria had arrived to relieve him of Elli and Erra he had bolted ( as much as one can call it bolting when there is absolutely no sound involved). He had promised Aria he would tell her, and he knew he would never rest if he didn’t tell her in time.

Enye was feeling better for the moment at least but she tried to keep unreasonable hope at bay. Elodan had informed her--and she had experienced herself--that her condition could often lead to dramatic swings in coherency; in the course of an hour she could feel almost normal aside from the pain in her side, and in a moment she could barely maintain consciousness and would float in and out of fevered dreams. 

“I’m sorry I’ve had to stay so long. I wish I could at least be of some use, but-”

“Enye-” he had to tell her right then or burst “I...I…”

“You what?” Enye actually laughed (in a very breathy and quiet manner, laughing did hurt her terribly) “you look scared half to death, almost like-”

“I love you.”

The laugh died, her face lost every shred of mirth. 

“What?” the whisper was almost inaudible.

“I love you. I have since the day I met you. All these five years I’ve loved you, and cursed fool that I am I’ve never said a single thing.”

“Did Aria make you say it just to make me feel better?”

“Well she did strongly recommend it, under pain of stabbing me in my sleep, but she did not force me to say something I didn’t mean with every shred of my heart.”

“That sounds like some romantic rubbish that girl would cook up and make you--”

“I’ll prove it.”

The kiss was soft, quick, not the long intense things tales tell of. He drew back after a moment.

Neither had ever seen the other’s eyes look the way they did in that moment. His looked somehow more blue if that was possible, bright and alert. Hers appeared darker than usual, incredulity staring out of them.

Then she smiled, a smile with a hundred summer mornings contained within. His laugh was quiet but his face was that of a prisoner released after years of confinement. 

“Good?” he asked,

“Good.” she answered. 

“More?” he asked,

“More.” she answered.

The second time around was like the ones tales tell of.

Something in the pit of her stomach seemed to flip over and her fingers tingled as if with an electric shock. She really had no idea what to do with her hands--they seemed quite useless in this situation and she was woefully inexperienced--so she just settled on putting her arms around his neck. 

He let his fingers wind into her hair, he just couldn’t help it; her breath caught and he realized with a slightly sheepish feeling that he liked it. He had wished to do this and she had wished he would for at least three years now, and they enjoyed it thoroughly. They broke apart for a moment, laughing the pure laughter of those experiencing complete happiness if only for a moment. He kissed her once more (you really can’t blame him, it was quite difficult to resist when she was right there and her eyes looked the way they did), not aggressive or overly intense but with an urgency behind it that made her shiver a little. 

It was at this delightfully opportune moment that Elodan decided to come into the room. They didn’t notice--they were, shall we say, rather distracted--until he laughed heartily. 

“Ah I wondered how long it would be! I see you took my advice to heart, laddie! Personally I am shocked that you’ve left each other out to dry as long as you have! But finally you figured it out. Bravo!”

No one had ever seen Legolas blush, and no one saw it after, but that was probably because a whole lifetime’s worth of blushing was concentrated into about ten seconds.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shall I kill her off or let her live...hmmm...wE sHaLL sEe
> 
> Neth~Little sister  
> Thithen iell~little girl  
> Dhene~I love you


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I know this chapter was short, but it was very satisfying to write XD   
> Let me know your thoughts in the comments!

“She died in the night. She was mostly unconscious; she died peacefully. She was in a terrible amount of pain, far more than she would let on to you or her sisters, and her chances of a full recovery were slim. This was the best for her. She was taken away for burial in the small hours; I believe it would have been too painful for you to see her. I’m so sorry laddie.”

The doctor's voice had sounded even and calm while he delivered the crushing blow, but he cracked at the end. 

Legolas was not aware of much for a moment or two. No sensation, no vision or input of any kind registered for a full minute. He didn’t speak, didn’t move. Just stood there. Elodan spoke a few more words, but all he heard was a buzzing like a hive of bees disturbed. Then the doctor reached out, as if to embrace him or offer some comfort of touch. The moment Elodan’s hand rested on his shoulder, he snapped back to consciousness, sensations heightened, everything in him screaming with pain. Moving quicker than sight he slapped the doctor’s hand hard, barely noticing that he did so and not caring that he did; out he ran into the sunlight, the horrid sunlight that was far far too bright for this blackened day. He was sprinting, not knowing where until he got there, to the little clearing that he had so often rested in as a child, where had worked on his bow and found sanctuary in the rustling leaves and sweetgrass. Gasping for air he sank to the ground, back to a tree. Legolas had never been one to cry, but he cried now. It was not the pretty type of crying where the single tear silently falls as the person’s face remains calmly smoothly sorrowful. Sobs ripped through his body; he covered his face with his hands to block out that horrid sunlight and felt water in the creases of his palms when he took his hands away. He tasted salt and bits of hair clung to his face. No one ever saw the elf prince like this again, and I am sure that those who knew him later would never believe that the unflinching, cooly peaceful, impeccably trained prince had ever appeared this way. But that day, he did. The reality of Enye’s death felt simultaneously surreal and horrifically present, inescapable. He wanted most in the world to talk to her, to hear her laugh and sing the way she had since they were children. He couldn’t think what to do without her; any grief he might have borne in the past five years had been swept from his mind when Enye was there. Now he was alone. 

Completely alone. 

He thought of every day they had spent together and wished that he could somehow have further realized their worth, the incredible value of every minute, minutes that had ticked down to nothing without his knowledge. He cursed himself for his folly. Why had he not allowed himself to love her before? Aria had been right; he had strung her out, let her wonder and wait for what he could so easily have given her. He thought of the feeling of his hands in her hair, that stubbornly thick half-curly unruly mess that she complained about but he had always loved. The feeling of his mouth on hers, of her quick uneven breaths as he kissed her. The talks they had had, the sudden glimpses of wisdom that shown through her conversation from time to time, always shocking in her sudden ability to provide complete clarity on something he considered “complicated.” Then his mind wandered to their first meeting, of his first glimpse of shining gray eyes in the rain, how she had dropped down in the mud beside a stranger just because he was hurting. He remembered the incensed tone in the little girl’s high clear voice when she had called out her brother when he had broken the little prince’s bow for no apparent reason. Her brother. 

His wild tumbling thoughts were sliced cold and clear by those words. 

Her brother. 

Fingolyn. 

In a fracture of a second crushing sadness was replaced by a blinding rage, an anger so keen and intense his vision actually blurred for a moment. If Fingolyn had left her alone Enye would be living, breathing, with him. Once again he was up and running, flying off toward the cursed place where he knew Fingolyn must be. 

The rotting door of the tiny filthy pub screeched as it flew open. As he had predicted, the hunched over figure on a stool in the corner was nursing a pint mug. 

“FINGOLYN!” 

The figure stirred, but didn’t rise. Legolas’s voice was not extremely loud, but it commanded silence from the room and action from the object. 

“If you choose not to get up and face me squarely, showing yourself to be the slinking coward that you are, Valar help me I will shoot off each of your fingers individually, and although I could do it quicker than thought I will do it slowly so that your screams can be heard all the way to Laketown, and the men of Dale may know that they hear the justified suffering of a murderer.”

Rather harsh perhaps, but really you can’t blame him. 

Fingolyn rose slowly, deliberately, but when he took a step his intoxication was evident. Finally they stood face to face, the one cold as winter midnight with death staring out of haunted eyes, the other with the pointless defiance of a mean cornered street dog. 

Legolas’s words were what some would call a whisper, but none that heard it could have classified them as such.

“Your sister is dead. You killed her. Now I could kill you right at this moment if I wished to. But, although some might say that a murderer is not entitled to the opportunity of defense, I would like to have the satisfaction of destroying you in a fair fight. So fight.”

Fingolyn just stared for a second.

“She’s...dead?” 

“Yes.”

“Enye is dead?”

“Yes.”

“Dead?”

“Do you know how close you are to an arrow in your throat?”

“Do you think I WANT HER DEAD?”

“Murderers most often want their victims dead, even if that victim IS said murderer's defenseless starving innocent sister.”

Fingolyn’s eyes were wild and crazed as those of a hunted animal.   
“If you had left my sister alone she would be alive! You drove me to anger, if she’s dead it’s your fault!”

Quicker that sight Legolas smashed his elbow into Fingolyn’s throat and kicked him hard in the stomach to put him off balance. Before Fingolyn could return any kind of blow Legolas shoved him hard and he was on the ground. Legolas pulled a flashing curved knife from the hidden sheath he always kept strapped to his thigh and dropped, sitting on Fingolyn’s chest.

“Don’t kill me please no let me go please no don’t-”

Fingolyn had transformed into something reminiscent of a kicked puppy.

“No, I shan’t kill you. Fate is cruel enough to leave two little girls dependent on your miserable existence. However, should you ever so much as pull a hair on one of their heads, I will kill you, and it will not be quick or easy. For the moment though, I will let you live, but you will not get away unscathed.” 

Legolas pressed the tip of the knife between Fingolyn’s eyebrows. A bead of red appeared. Slowly, deliberately, he dragged the blade over his skin, carving a path in an arch over his eyebrow, then in a curve almost reaching the eye but just missing it, then down over the cheekbone and around the chin, ending at the opposite corner of the mouth. As he traced the vicious path, Legolas hissed in a voice that must have cut as well as the blade, “remember this feeling for the rest of your pitiful life. Use the memory of excruciating pain as a reminder of the life you took away, your sister’s life, helpless, guiltless, kind and beautiful, taking away the one person your sisters loved, the girl I loved, the girl that should have lived to see the red leaves fall five hundred times and more. Every time you see your reflection in some hapless stream the very waters will be disgusted, and you shall see looking back at you the hideous face of a drunk, a coward, a murderer, and you shall see the scar that marks your guilt with the certainty of brokenness.”

With that he rose abruptly, sheathed the knife, and walked out, deaf to Fingolyn’s screams and numb to the world that seemed to curse him with the love of others lost.

**Author's Note:**

> Adar~Father  
> Ada~informal of father, equivalent to papa or daddy  
> Lasse Telelle~Little Leaf  
> Telelle Aran~Little King  
> Meaiheithian~Release me
> 
> Legolas's mother's name varies by who you ask, as she appears rarely and obscurely in Tolkien's works. I researched and found two names for her (Tolkien generally gives his characters multiple names), but since it's my story I just picked the one I liked, Eluriel.


End file.
